Friday, February 13, 2004
About time [30]
There has, just once, been a February 30th. It happened in Sweden, and it happened in 1712. The Swedes needed to lose 11 days to come in line with the Gregorian calendar. Rather than lose all 11 days in one go, they planned to miss out every February 29th from 1700 to 1740 instead. They missed out the leap day in 1700 correctly, then forgot to miss it out in 1704 and 1708. Oops. At this point they gave up and decided to revert back to the old calendar, which required an extra leap day to be added in 1712. Pity the Swedish babies born on on February 30th 1712, because they never saw another birthday. See here and here.
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